Gartner's Top 10 Strategic Technology Trends for 2015

The top technology trends compiled by Gartner have the potential to affect individuals, businesses and IT organizations. They are the prime enablers behind new digital business opportunities. Their disruptive power stems from merging virtual and physical worlds, the growth of intelligence everywhere, and the emerging new realities of IT.

As discussed by David Cearley, Gartner VP & Gartner Fellow, the most fundamental theme behind the top strategic technology trends for 2015 is the shift to digital business.

The merging of the physical and the virtual world offers "Computing Everywhere." It's not just simply about a move to mobile computing, but it's a move beyond those mobile devices to an age where we look at "mobile" meaning "mobile people."

The world is our computer and we are walking around within that. We have those mobile devices, devices on desktops, devices on our wrists, devices on our heads, devices in our clothes, our cars are devices, there are screens all around us. That extends to the Internet of Things, so it's all of the industrial equipment and the sensors in the world that extend this idea of the world being the computer.

3D printing has also reached out into the real world to instantiate something from the virtual world and the real world. So that's the virtual and real worlds coming together.

SMAC: The ICT Path Towards a Truly Digital Government

SMAC (social, mobile, analytics and cloud) is the concept that four technologies are currently driving business innovation.

None of the four technologies can be an afterthought because it's the synergy created by social, mobile, analytics and cloud working together that creates a competitive advantage.

Social media has provided businesses with new ways to reach and interact with customers, while mobile technologies have changed the way people communicate, shop and work. Analytics allow businesses to understand how, when and where people consume certain goods and services and cloud computing provides a new way to access technology and the data a business needs to quickly respond to changing markets and solve business problems.

While each of the four technologies can impact a business individually, their convergence is proving to be a disruptive force that is creating entirely new business models for service providers. Below are most of the insights shared by Lorenzo Fernando Tandeo, PLDT's Head of Business Development for Cloud and Data Center for Enterprise, from his talk at the 2015 NICT Summit.

Based on the latest estimate, there are now about 40 million online Filipinos. Pinoys spend an average of 4 hours a day connected to the Internet. There are also more phones than the number of people in the country thus we are prominent as a mobile-equipped country already. These numbers will unsurprisingly double or triple in the next years. This is the new normal. Everyone is connected somehow and someway, and without hyping PLDT or Globe Telecom, the undebatable fact is "People connect!"